Undocumentedness and Liminality as Health Variables

Abstract

The growing exodus of indigenous people from Mexico into the United States, especially from the multiethnic state of Oaxaca, is used as an exemplar of the global phenomenon of transnational migration and its effects on health. Lately, indigenous Oaxacan women have become a predominant part of this diaspora in the United States. Driven by economic desperation most arrive across the border as undocumented persons that configure them into multiple liminal spaces inimical to health and well-being. This article provides a venue for some of their voices to be heard, some major concerns understood, and for proposing links between postcolonial Mexico, neoliberal globalization, and immigration border policy as driving forces that undergird these conditions. An emancipatory praxis of nursing to promote health and reduce suffering within transnational migrants is proposed as a starting place for future nursing scholarship.

Social cohesion, social support, and health among Latinos in the United States

“…These variables may be capturing the negative effects of insular relationships in poor isolated communities. Alternately, they could be proxies for stressful experiences, such as employment vulnerability and fear of deportation (Hovey & Magana, 2002;Sullivan & Rehm, 2005) or overt discrimination, sometimes even experienced in immigrants' country of origin before arriving in the United States (McGuire & Georges, 2003).…”

Undocumentedness and public policy: The impact on communities, individuals, and families along the Arizona/Sonora border

“…The social, political, and economic context of undocumented migration is complex and constantly changing, with profound effects on the individuals, families, and communities involved (Ayó n, 2009). The multiple and complex relationships among immigration, undocumentedness, health status, and health care access have been substantiated in nursing and public health research (McEwen, Pasvogel, & Gallegos, 2010;McGuire, 2013;McGuire & Georges, 2003;Messias, 1996;McEwen & Boyle, 2007). Because the environments in which people live, work, learn, and play have a tremendous impact on their health (APHA, 2014), nursing and other public health leaders are called on to partner with those who are best positioned to create policies that advocate for the health of this vulnerable and marginalized population.…”

“…When individuals come from cultures that highly value the cohesiveness of the family, they have a very difficult time adjusting to the individualistic society of the United States. Stress, grief, and disruption are created within family systems when one or more members migrate to the United States and leave other family members behind in their country of origin (DeLuca, McEwen, & Keim, 2007;McGuire & Georges, 2003). The families left behind know that they may never see their loved one again or, worse, the son, daughter, father, or mother may die in the attempt to enter the United States.…”

“…Rape is not unusual for migrant women traveling in Mexico or even in detention centers (Wolf, 2014). McGuire and Georges (2003) studied undocumented Oaxacan women in the United States. The women spoke of an intense loneliness and sadness related to family separation, a painful life that was barely tolerable without the children they had left behind.…”

“Is it worth risking your life?”: Ethnography, risk and death on the U.S.–Mexico border

“…Another man recounted being raped by a border patrol agent in exchange for his freedom. Because of the distressing numbers of deaths, their increase related to US border policy, the polarized political debates regarding immigration and the border, and the important health implications of the associated danger and trauma (see McGuire & Georges, 2003;Villarejo, 2003;see also Coker, 2004;Grønseth, 2010;McKay, MacIntyre, & Ellaway, 2003 related to the health effects of immigration in other contexts), the USeMexico border deserves our close and focused attention. This paper will utilize the methodology of ethnography e with its unique strengths in investigating lived experience as a long-term eye-witness, reflexively analyzing social positionality and social difference, and paying attention to linkages between micro level lived experience and macro level political economic structures e in order to analyze the experiences of suffering, fear, danger, and vulnerability in the USeMexico borderlands.…”